“Amazing.” Priya smiled and bowed her head. “Thank you for sharing your experience with me. I shall go and see this young sage for myself.” She touched the cloth that she wore over her sightless eyes. “So to speak.”
“Take care, sister!” The young man climbed back up onto the grassy shoulder of the road behind them and continued on his way.
Asha waited for Priya to catch up and then resumed her own brisk march along the shoulder. “So we’ll be stopping in Kasar, then?”
“We were going to stop in Kasar anyway.”
“Not on purpose. Only because it’s there.”
“Ah. Well, now we have a purpose.”
Asha grimaced. She pulled a sliver of ginger root from her shoulder bag and poked the little green-white spear into the corner of her mouth. She chewed. “Let’s try to keep the purpose short, if we can. There’s still a long road ahead.”
2
The village of Kasar sprawled across the intersection of the main highway and a smaller country road running off east and west into the fields. The village was little more than a collection of empty market stalls, neglected shrines, and a single ox-turned mill that smelled of rotting grain. There were a few houses scattered around the intersection, but nothing else. No shops, no indication of any craftsmen of any sort. No smithy or forge or tinker, no tailor or weaver, no potter or glassblower, or stone carver, or anything.
Evening was coming on quickly. As the sun retreated into the west, the sky faded to dusky violet and slate blue. The rain lessened, which did nothing for how soaked the travelers were or how dangerous the muddy highway was underfoot, but the noise of the falling water dropped considerably. Asha welcomed the quiet. Even here in this pitiful village, there was life to see and hear. Rows of crops, huddled flowers, and even trampled weeds.
She pulled her long, sodden hair back to uncover her right ear. The dragon’s venom seemed to burn a little more these days, and the hard scales on her skin itched and chafed, but Asha ignored the irritations. Instead, she focused on the sounds of living things, the hums and titters and songs of souls. Some were human souls, ringing out loud and clear with emotion and life and intention, while others were animal souls, muddled and vague with primitive desires and impulses, and lastly were the plant souls, dimmest and strangest of all, singing their mysterious notes that told her almost nothing except, “Here I am. I live, I grow. And I carry a seed, or a fruit, or a root that you might want.”
Asha paused at the edge of the intersection of the highway and the farmers’ lane. To the north and south she saw and heard little of interest. There were only a few more travelers on their way to wherever travelers go. Other souls rang out inside the houses and stalls, the souls of tired people with little on their minds but supper. She heard the animals and plants among them, rodents and vermin and weeds, sounds she knew all too well. Nothing new. Nothing she needed. The one thing that sang a bit louder and a bit finer than all the others was a lone almond tree near the pilgrims, but even that lovely tree couldn’t tempt her to stand about in the wet, dark road.
Satisfied that there were no other healing gems hidden in the rough of Kasar, she turned her attention to the crowd at the west end of the village. She needed no cursed ear to hear the gathering there. At least a hundred men, women, and children stood and sat in the muddy grass beside the road, all clustered around a gnarled little tree, its branches drooping with shining wet leaves.
“I hear them,” Priya said. The nun smiled and petted the mongoose on her shoulder. “Such soft voices, so full of reverence and expectation. So much joy and eagerness. Like a single great breath being held, awaiting a beautiful sunrise.”
Asha only saw a hundred homeless people with slouching shoulders, dripping hair, and wet clothing plastered to their thin frames. They looked tired. They looked hungry. “I suppose you want to visit this living Buddha right now?”
“No time like the present.”
Asha frowned up at the darkening, overcast sky. It was exactly the same as last evening, and the one before. Recently the days had been a blur of sameness, of routine. “If you say so.”
They turned off the highway and approached the crowd spreading out from the little tree in concentric semi-circles. As the two women moved among the faithful watchers, many hungry eyes shifted to the newcomers, and many empty hands were extended toward them. If Priya sensed the gestures, she made no sign of it. Asha simply ignored them. The fields and forests were full of food for anyone willing to make the effort, and she carried no money at all.
They stood before the little tree among the closest pilgrims and Asha studied the boy seated among the roots, and she described him to her companion. “He looks to be about ten or twelve. Thin. Middling skin. Shaved head. No eyebrows. Seated in the lotus position, completely naked. Clean fingernails. Eyes closed, mouth closed. I can’t see his chest rising as he breathes at all. Not even the slightest tremor or twitch in his hands or feet. No footprints or other marks on the ground around him. The falling rain has spattered a little bit of mud on his lower body. He’s been here a while, that’s for sure. He must be cold and hungry, whether he knows it or not. He won’t last long like this.”
“That is one possibility.”
“It’s the only possibility,” Asha said. “The human body has limits. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. I saw it growing up in Kathmandu. Sages, monks, priests, and other stunt artists. He won’t last, or he has someone secretly feeding him somehow. At best, he’s a fool. At worst, a fraud.”
“Always thinking in dualities,” Priya said. “There are always more than two possibilities.”
Asha sighed. “Yes, well he could be a god or a ghost or a donkey, I suppose. Listen, the sun has just set and I’d like to sleep someplace dry. Or dry-ish. Can we please go find an empty house or stall or something for the night?”
“Of course,” the nun said mildly. “No need to suffer unnecessarily.”
Asha led the way back toward the intersection, but stepped off the road when she found a small market stall with a solid roof. The ground smelled faintly of mangos. It’s always mangos, Asha mused. She spread her wool blanket on the damp earth and shared a handful of nuts and berries with Priya, and then they slept.
Asha dreamed of warm food.
She had no idea what the nun dreamed about.
3
The next morning Priya returned to the congregation at the foot of the little tree. The rain had faded away in the night somewhere over the eastern ridge and the sun rose bright and clear in a pale blue sky. Everything high dripped and everything low gurgled as the water slowly drained across the land toward the nearest river, which roared quietly off to the west beyond a low hill.
Asha was still picking her teeth when Priya set out unaided for the crowd of pilgrims and their young sage. The herbalist finished her teeth in her own good time, draped her hair over her right ear, and trudged carefully after her friend. The mud puddles lay thick and deep about her, and she could hear the worms wriggling in the murky water. She wasn’t afraid of them. She wasn’t afraid of any living creature. But the thought of stepping on a pile of wet worms was… unpleasant.
When she reached the crowd, the first thing Asha looked at was the tree. Not the little tree behind the boy but the other one across the road. The almond tree towered in its prime with leaves both long and broad, and tiny white flowers that would soon bear tiny red fruits, each with a single precious nut inside. Its shade fell across most of the road, though no one sat beneath it, and as she glanced around the hovels of Kasar she could easily pronounce the almond tree to be the most beautiful thing in sight. She had noted it before, but now she could appreciate it fully. Her right ear coursed with the sounds of flowers and unborn fruits, of the rich seeds and the dusky grey-gold wood locked away within the bark. It was a wonderful creature, that tree. Asha could think of a dozen ways to use its leaves and flowers to heal and sooth all manners of ailments, and she reminded herself to gather a few specimens before
they left.
Then with a sigh she turned her attention back to the crowd, and the boy, and the miserable little sapling at his back. It was a twisted and gnarled little tree with feeble limbs and precious few leaves and Asha could barely hear the life of it in her scaled ear. She guessed it was a diseased old teak, and that its pathetic appearance in some way made the boy’s meditations all the more holy. Asha shook her head as she tucked a sliver of ginger into the corner of her mouth and waded through the crowd of muddy pilgrims still asleep in the middle of the road.
Priya sat on the grass beside the boy, and her saffron robes and bound eyes seemed to add a new layer of majesty and mystery to the setting because Asha noticed dozens of the filthy vagrants sitting up to take notice and make joyful wails and gasps. Asha only spared the boy a glance before turning her attention to the boggy field behind the tree to wonder what useful insects or grasses she might find down there.
“Asha?”
She looked at Priya, who was frowning. Jagdish jumped down off the nun’s shoulder and began sniffing the tree’s roots. “What?”
“Could you please take a look at the boy? I’m afraid I cannot hear his breathing, even with my keen ears. I think your expertise is warranted. But please do not disturb him.”
Asha returned to the tree, aware of the countless eyes fixed on her every movement, and she knelt down beside the boy. He appeared unchanged from the night before. Still sitting in the lotus position, eyes and mouth closed, head perfectly hairless, and not the slightest tremor in his fingers or toes. Asha plucked a blade of grass and ran it lightly along the boy’s feet and palms. There was no reaction. She peered at his eyelids, but could see no darting impressions of his eyes to betray his thoughts or dreams. After watching his chest for several minutes, she could not say she had seen him draw a single breath and she pulled a small mirror from her bag to hold before his nose and mouth, but after several more minutes not even the smallest cloud of fog appeared on the glass.
Asha glanced nervously at Priya and then at the other pilgrims. “I’m going to touch his arm now. Just for a moment.” No one spoke, which she took to be silent permission, so she placed her fingertips on the boy’s inner wrist.
No pulse. His skin was smooth though fairly firm, and he was only slightly warmer than the earth he was sitting on.
“Some sort of comatose state, maybe,” she muttered.
“Like the family we found in the mountains?” Priya asked.
Asha winced and glanced up at the withered tree to check for strange fruits. There were none. “Similar, maybe. But not the same.” She reached up and placed her fingertips against the side of the boy’s throat and waited. Minutes passed, and minutes more. Finally her arm grew too tired to hold up any longer and she relented, leaning back to sit and rest and think. Still no pulse. Not even a very slow pulse. And yet he was slightly warm.
“Is something wrong?” asked an elderly woman behind them.
Asha didn’t turn to look at the woman. “Probably. He’s not breathing and he has no heart beat. How long has he been here like this? When was the last time anyone saw him eat? Or even just move?”
No one answered. The nearest pilgrims just shrugged and shook their heads.
“No one?” Asha grimaced. “How long have you been here?”
They answered one by one:
“Two days.”
“Four days.”
“Seven days.”
Seven days, at least. Asha sighed. The boy might have died just recently, just hours ago, perhaps even during the night while she slept nearby. If so, he would be cool in a few hours, and he would finally fall over.
“We need to move him,” she said softly. And then louder, “I’m sorry, but we need to move him. He’s not well.”
No one seemed to have heard her. No one stood or spoke, or even looked at her.
“You there, come help me, please.” She looked at two young men near the front who had glanced in her direction. One of them looked away but the other frowned and nodded and stood up. He came over to the boy and Asha directed him to stand across from her so that together they could lift him. The boy’s whole body was so firm, so stiff, that she hoped they could simply carry him away in his seated posture and avoid making a scene.
Together she and the young man bent down and took hold of the boy’s legs, and lifted. Nothing happened. Asha strained to the point of grunting out loud, but the boy did not move. She pulled up so hard that her feet began to sink down into the soft wet earth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her assistant was faring no better so she let go and waved him back. After a moment’s rest, she directed the young man again, this time to dig their hands as far under the boy as possible. The earth was cold and a bit slimy, but they both reached under to form a platform with their arms and again they tried to lift him.
And again the boy did not move, did not even shudder or jostle. He remained perfectly still. Asha dismissed her confused assistant with a grateful look. A soft murmur ran through the gathered onlookers, but she ignored them.
“What happened?” Priya asked. “What’s wrong now?”
“We couldn’t lift him. It was like he’s nailed to the earth, or he weighs as much as an elephant. I can’t explain it.”
The nun smiled. “I don’t suppose you’d like to entertain the thought that this wise child can bend space and matter to make himself too heavy to lift?”
“Not just yet,” Asha said calmly. She chewed her ginger and studied the boy. Both she and the young man had reached far under the boy to lift him, shoving their hands through the muddy topsoil, but she hadn’t felt anything strange that might be holding the boy down. “What’s his name? Does anyone know?”
A few people shook their heads.
Asha stood and said to Priya, “I’m going to take a look around. I’ll be back soon.” She slipped around the edge of the pilgrims’ circle and paced slowly toward the center of the village, her arms folded across her belly, her brow creased in thought. For the rest of the morning, she wandered around each little house, each little market stall, and each little animal pen. She greeted the handful of people she found and asked each of them, “When did the boy first arrive?”
And they would answer, “About seven days ago.”
She would say, “Who is he? Where did he come from?”
And they would shrug and go about their business.
So on she went, studying the grasses and the ants and the flies, looking and listening for answers. Why is the boy too heavy to lift? How is he surviving without food or water? Where did he come from? And why did he come here, of all places?
The ants and flies couldn’t tell her.
Around noon Asha sat down at the eastern edge of the village to eat a dried date and watch three young girls playing in the muddy road. They chased each other, flinging little clumps of mud and laughing. Asha was about to get up to move farther from their range of fire when one of the girls ran straight over to her and squinted down at her. “Can you make him go away?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The living Buddha,” the girl said. “I saw you try to pick him up. Are you his mother?”
Asha grinned and shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m an herbalist. I was just trying to help him. Why? Why do you want him to go away?”
“Because that’s where we used to play, in the grass. But our parents all said to stay away from those people, so now we have to play over here, in the mud.”
Asha looked over her shoulder across the village at the distant cluster of bodies in the road. “I guess it is a little nicer down that way. Plus you have the tree to climb.”
The girl shook her head. “That tree’s way too tall to climb. No one can reach the first branch!”
Asha smiled. “Not the almond tree. I meant the little teak tree. Surely you could climb that one.”
“The little one? No, that wasn’t there before.”
The girl started to turn back to her friends, but Asha caught
her hand. “What do you mean, it wasn’t there before? Before when?”
“I don’t know. Before that boy showed up.”
“You mean seven days ago?”
She nodded.
Asha let her go and she ran back to her friends to resume the serious work of shouting, chasing, kicking, and tossing small globs of mud at each other. She stood and walked back toward the pilgrims, but stopped well outside their circle where she could see the gnarled tree clearly. It was no more than twice her own height, maybe less. By its size alone, she guessed it to be at least three years old, though from its miserable appearance it could have been much older. But not less. And not a mere seven days.
4
At the edge of the grass, Asha looked down the shallow slope at the wet field below and behind the stunted teak tree. Farther out she could see the rows of oilseed stalks waving gently in the breeze, but in the corner of the field closest to her, Asha saw where the oilseed plantings ended in a ragged line and a swamped, marshy patch of earth began. A few planted stalks poked up through the stagnant black water, but not many. Flies buzzed over slimy, wet mounds that glistened in the midday sun. Nothing so large as a frog seemed to be moving in the water. A thick oily film lay on the surface painting dark rainbows in perfect stillness.
Behind the little teak tree she saw a few pale roots twisting down through the mud into the oily water below. She drew back the hair from her right ear and cupped her hand there, listening. After a moment she heard the low humming of the oilseeds and the grasses and the almond tree, all softly resounding like bells rung long ago but not quite done echoing their final notes. Flies and hornets and butterflies danced across the fields alone and in swarms, all tinkling like broken glass in her cursed ear. But down in the dark muck, she heard nothing but a few sickly tufts of grass and the occasional bug skating over the oily pond.
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